


Looks and Books

by dollsome



Category: Angel: the Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're in the middle of what feels like hour seven billion of researching very nasty demons in very dusty books ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looks and Books

  
They're in the middle of what feels like hour seven billion of researching very nasty demons in very dusty books, and Cordelia gets that her calling is a noble one, that her brain-crippling headaches are for the greater good, that it wouldn't be such a stretch to deem her this generation's Joan of Arc except with, you know, actual good hair. (She tries to stifle all memories of her high school affinity for Marie Antoinette, and how there's a part of her that would totally rather rise to _that_ destiny, as long as that whole decapitation thing's not set in stone.)

But God, it's _boring,_ and did she mention nasty demons?, and so she lets her gaze drift away from the page and across the room to Wesley. Experimentally, she tries to look at him like she had a year or so ago. Which is to say, like a viable sexual candidate rather than the world's most remarkable prig/dork hybrid.

It's not so hard. Spazzy though he is, there's something about a proximity to books that seems to steady him, to make him surer. He turns a page, the movement thoughtless and precise. He's got one elbow on the table, his chin resting on his fist. He looks handsome in an old fashioned period piece way. Chivalry and sharp angles. She follows his eyes as they follow the words. Maybe her attention migrates south to his lips. Whatever experience she might have had to the contrary, he definitely doesn't _look_ like the world's worst kisser. Not at the moment.

... She must be _really_ bored. And, okay, a little nostalgic for a time when her biggest concern had been figuring out which dress made her look the most sexy-intellectual-irresistible-wise-beyond-her-years. Sure, trips to the high school library should in no way make anyone's heart go pitter patter (anyone who's not Willow Rosenberg, at least), but she smiles faintly at the memory. Recalls the pile of unread books that accumulated on her desk at home, mostly for Oops, This Old Thing, Due Already? George Eliot? Who Doesn't Love That Guy? Oh, Wesley! I Had No Idea _You'd_ Be Here-type purposes.

She must laugh a little to herself, because Wesley looks up.

"Cordelia? What is it? Have you remembered another detail from your vision? Have you had another vision? Tell me, did the demons in question have two horns protruding from the forehead, or just the one? And regarding the mucous excretion--"

Yep. He's Wesley. He's so, so inescapably and totally Wesley.

"Simmer down, buddy. I was just looking."

"Looking?" He sounds so baffled. Oh, it's fun. "... At me?"

"Maybe," she says coyly. All her old pals come out to play, by sheer (and, lately, wasted) instinct: sparkly flirty glance, hair toss, big smile.

"Well," Wesley says. "Er. Um. I--"

 _Still got it,_ she decides, pleased. She spends the rest of the day feeling uncharacteristically kindly toward ol' Stick in the Mud Wyndam-Pryce.


End file.
